Tired Tyler First Interlude: Drinking With Johnny

(I)

Johnny flits

like sparks from

static touch,

stings skin patches numb

and rubs hands

like uncut phantom limbs.

He rubs elbow

creases

into dry, smooth peaks.

He keeps busy.

The gulp method

keeps his buzz afloat

as the sud-line lowers

its film

from the crystal lip.

If only, oh

if only

each glass

were a well

distended, descending

its dark worm of liquid

beneath table-top lacquer,

if, sweet, if so

then Johnny's dark-worm throat

would answer those

malted depths

with vacuum.

(II)

Tapped Tyler

twiddles his thumbs,

tastes

his raw gums, and

nurses

a buzz

from the faithfully

sloshing bronze

breezy hop infused

wet-nurse

wetting his lips with

artificial happiness

like a sprinkler's dewey fog, a

sticky mist of yeast colored

cold liquid-gold.

(Cat Cry)

This cat

just doesn't shut up.

It's the first

truly mewling sound

to

pierce his ears, to

pry his

sleep-searching head

from awkward

side-slung laying

(a crooked fetal

line

dividing the bed)

to look up

through star-punctured dark

and mumble reluctantly,

"What the fuck

does that cat want?"

At least it's not an existential query.

It's the

domestic cat-cry

theory of food,

rather simple, two-step

geometry

as only a thing

more aware

of the common denominator

of surviving each moment

can be.

Life that close

to the stomach

doesn't

make you a killer;

it makes you

complain.

She does this

for

the old smell

held fresh

in pastel colored tins,

thumb tabs

pointing

to well-fed

felicitous kitties;

all for that taste

of orange-brown

puree, shaped

like rotten sea-food

molè, each hill 

plopped

with a gurgle

as air seeps

between

the brackish fish-syrup

and its quivering mound

of processed

sea-stars, dolphin teeth,

horrors of the deep

cleaned, gutted, and

chopped to fine paste

for feline consumption.

Tired Tyler Parts I & II

Hey there, just to let you know, this poem is semi-biographical only in the sense that the main figure shares my name, and has experiences inspired by, but not necessarily equivalent to, my own. When reading, try not to import what you know about me into the poem itself; it needs to stand at least somewhat on its own. Form, style, and intent for this poem were inspired by John Berryman's incredible poem "The Dream Songs," which you should absolutely check out. I'm including parts I and II in this note, the next will be an interlude, and then a note with parts III-VI.

I

Tired Tyler

sleeps too much to tell

what day it is.

The weather snaps him

mid-nap. He

stumbles into unknown air

unprepared.

Sunlight sapped of heat

steals his.

Why didn't

you spread a jacket

over your skinny frame?

You are cold iron

young man,

scolded, rightly, by morning sighs;

you'll be blown away

young wicker man;

in this wet world

you'll never burn.

Tuckered Tyler lies,

lays his hours

under bruised eyelids.

Black smothers his best lays,

his most musical song-thoughts

know dream-death's un-writing.

All he breathes

are fragments.

Swept as he is,

eyes open and shaded

by veins,

Tyler grasps at

flowing filaments

and fallout.

II

A smile seeps significance,

seems like something

however transitional

as passing teeth, glanced briefly

can be.

The even porcelain squares

brand smoldering heat

from small lips lightly broken,

barely upturned.

He presses these

white fire-rocks,

the warm pseudo-promise

of curled mouth-corners,

to his slender

neck.

His willow whittles away.

So, I have to say sorry

So, I have to apologize to everyone (especially you, my single reader) that I haven't updated in quite a while. I've been writing this whole time, not tirelessly, because after all I'm sleepless by nature, but in a fashion without regard to sleep. I'm sorry it's been so long without an update, so I'm going to pile it on really hard, and really fast. Hopefully you enjoy the stuff I spout out. If not, then we'll all have to live with that, I guess.

Down on the Line

Phone line beeps twice,
whispers its sultry
corporate code, breathes
brand-names like sad
lost-lovers to whip
you erotic,
jealously ready
to reclaim the correct price;

And you prepare to make nice,
stretch the unseen rictus grin
across your voice, a face,
invisible, can hear you smile, feel
you strain to see the screen, to
avoid the screaming calm
of playing God with cars, where
God explains he's powerless, impatient,
out of time,
takes your name and number,
and hangs up, hangs
by the headset phonecord
umbilicus
until either it,
or you,
stop transmitting, spitting
snot in the sink
on your third extra break, just clearing
the green
and blood-colored crud
before your guilt numbers jump
to unacceptable levels,
report you
a certain percent indisposed;

Were your eyes closed? Did
you miss a beet (I mean beep)?
Is this where you go, sometimes
when you sleep?
Are
your wounds weeping out
rancid little
liquid bits of you?
Are your sleep-rumpled slacks
noticeably stained? Can
they hear you dishevel
over the line? Does your stubble
scratch like static? Is
the crumble of your rubble
an audible decay? Has your wallet pocket
completely frayed, one corner
displayed to the world, to
the beauracratic watch?

What time is it?

But you know
you can't leave yet; the
weight of screen sings
shrill plasma flatness,
and the phone demands service, and
you sit, and don't fall
to your knees; you greet,
you sneeze, you limply lie,
you transfer, and your voice
falls
from a wind
to a hoarse breeze.

Condition

Lay down fire like roses,
like roses always a'bloom, but
with a little more boom
than flowering,
mushrooms the breath of dragons,
matter divorced
in roots reaching up
from the crater-pocked earth.

Lather candy in candy, in armor,
in polethyne crystal, in
dead coral spray-painted clean;
lick it's haught-coture hide away,
tongue pebbled in tangy
rust-rhime;
clear rhinestone canvas
with with evenly timed swipes,
careful, dutiful
to the slow carress of its sharp edges;
borders or blades, cutting
the empty air like a razor
parting skin.

Dawn the petalled breast-plate,
dappled in dew, wrought
in the fluidic refraction of light,
brightness metal-born, worn
in sheets coruscating, each
flaky brilliance barely sating
hungry dark, bleak and streaking
black marks like tar pits
searching for pores
in the earth
to bleed through, from
stiff veins, where slow blood pools.

Slight the human condition
by playing into its
cloying, prying, cried out vices,
its tired old tries, tires spinning
in the filth and the flesh,
the raw, eaten flesh, crushed
between molars, enamel flecked
and pitted by wear, by years, by
bacteria and spit; flit
between stations of static
emotion, concealed, congealed
concretely entombed in concentric catacombs
of lovely breathing bones,
of air in vascular balloons,
alvioli aromatic with the spice
of burnt iron, septic, the soul
longing for sepsis and sin,
the need to once again begin.

Word Salad

Prick fingers, shed fangs,
shiver shingles above the slither
of closing window-panes;
play porcelain 'round rain-slick thighs,
tell the alabaster duchess
to control her liquid sighs;
wither wicker rocking-chairs
with the holy-ghost's flame;
filter light through ashes,
flirt highbeams, bleed names,
fan black feathers
and hide in the darkling wind,
find an invitation to rescind;
send a letter, pay a phone;
round the corner
on your way home;
lay labor, play at patrol,
weave lichen like snakes,
take toll;
cut the red-navel ribbon, rip bones,
layer skin over skeletal thrones;
laugh pausingly, forget a black sail,
leave a crease
in the palm of your tale.

It's technically the same year I began a blog, so I guess it hasn't failed...

So, they say that most blogs fail, just up and blow away, whether through lack of attention, creative output, or simply getting a life (though the last option seems unlikely, for a blogger). Well, I may not know who "they" are, or why I made them up, but I know that in this instance, they are mostly wrong.

I know I promised to keep the personal diatribes to a minimum, but I feel you all (and I reserve the right to not count how many people "you all" actually represents) deserve an explanation for the hiatus. Having a soul-sucking job can drain creativity as well as animus, much as it may pay for "food" and "real goddamn housing", but the spark remains, and it still burns, as long as my hands may protectively tent above its blazing surface.

I thank anyone who is still with me.

You're here for poetry, and poetry you shall have! Lately, that's meant exercises in free-thought and the movement of creative juices, through creative dietary regimes (figuratively speaking, of course). Enjoy!